Month: September 2015
Russia in Syria
Anastasia Levchenko of Sputnik International, which thinks Putin at the UN showed Obama who is in charge, asked me some questions the day before yesterday. I replied:
Q: Russia is currently not planning to participate in any military operations on the territory of Syria or other countries, Putin said. “But we are thinking of how to intensify our work both with President [Bashar] al-Assad and our partners in other countries,” Putin said in the interview.
Should this statement calm down Western states, or are they hyping the topic of allegedly possible military presence of Russia in Syria out of political reasons, to have political pressure on Moscow?
A: President Putin is splitting hairs. Installing a major base at Latakia is already a significant military operation. If he means that Russia does not intend to conduct offensive operations, I’ll be surprised if he can keep to that pledge. Extremists will attack the Russian base. How will Moscow react?
Put it this way: if the US had just installed an air base with a couple of thousand personnel in Ukraine to support what it regards as the legitimate Kiev government, would Moscow view that as escalation of the conflict there?
Q: Putin also mentioned that the opinion that the resignation of Bashar Assad would contribute to the fight against the Islamic State extremist group is nothing but “anti-Syrian propaganda.” He recommended Western partners to forward their wishes regarding Assad’s resignation to the Syrian population, who are the ones to decide the future of the country.
Do you agree that it is propaganda, or can Assad’s resignation indeed contribute to the fight against the Islamic State?
A: The Syrian people have been voting with their feet in peaceful demonstrations and with arms against Bashar al Assad for more than four and a half years. The issue for the US is not his resignation, but rather a negotiated political transition in which he loses power. No one in the West talks simply of his resignation. That is a straw man Putin invented.
Q: The Syrian conflict can only be resolved by strengthening existing government institutions, encouraging them to engage in a dialogue with opposition groups and by carrying out political reforms, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated.
In this context, what do you think of the establishment of a coordination structure to fight the Islamic State militants by Russia, Syria, Iran and Iraq?
A: I think Iraq can use all the help it can get. If this helps, so be it.
As for Syria, a large part of the non-extremist opposition is not interested in strengthening Bashar al Assad and will fight so long as it sees no clear end of him.
Russia needs to worry a bit more than it has about appearing to align itself in Syria against the majority Sunni population.
Q: In the interview Putin also said he had personally informed the heads of Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia about the establishment of a coordination structure.
Do you think these countries might be interested in joining the structure? Who else? Any Western countries?
Q: I doubt Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia will join this coordination structure. They are much more likely to urge in response a strengthened Western Coalition. I understand they are meeting in New York with the US at this very moment.
Then yesterday Umid Niayesh of the Azerbaijani Trend News Agency also asked some questions. I answered:
Q: Russia has decided to play more active role in Syria, sending military equipments and troops to support Syrian government which is also a close ally of Tehran.
How can it affect the balance of power in the Middle East?
A: I don’t think this Russian deployment of a couple of thousand troops and a couple of dozen warplanes affects the balance of power in the Middle East in any significant way. It is intended to shore up Bashar al Assad, whose forces have been weakening and appeared to be unable to stem the advance of insurgents southwest from Idlib towards Latakia and Tartous, where Russia maintains port facilities.
I note the contrast between President Putin’s claim in an interview in the US last weekend that Russia will not conduct military operations in Syria but only support the Syrian government and the widely reported strikes by Russian warplanes against Islamic State targets, which are inconsistent with his statement. It seems to me Russia has put itself on the slippery slope towards much greater involvement in the Syrian war, with significant casualties likely.
Q: Can it lead to formation of a new coalition, with Iran and Russia as its main actors?
A: Iran and Russia have been together in supporting Bashar al Assad for the past four and a half years. Their effort to help him suppress the insurgency has so far failed. Many in the West see the Russian move as competitive with Iran, to beef up Moscow’s influence in Damascus.
Q: How will it affect the regional countries such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia?
A: Not much. Turkey is mainly concerned with the Kurdish forces on its border and wants to create a protected area in northern Syria, one not controlled by Kurds, to which it can repatriate some refugees. Neither of those concerns is much affected by the Russian deployment. Saudi Arabia has supported the insurgency against Assad and the Western anti-ISIS Coalition. I expect it to keep on doing those things.
Q: May it lead to change of US policy towards the region?
A: I didn’t hear anything in President Obama’s speech yesterday to suggest that. He is clearly willing to talk with Iran and Russia about Syria but we are still a long way from agreement on what to do.
Q: Mohammad Nahavandian, chief of staff of President Hassan Rouhani, has said that further cooperation between the US and Iran on fighting terrorism in the region could be possible if the United States fulfills its commitments in the Iran nuclear deal to lift sanctions. On the other hand Khamenei has emphasized that the two parties’ co-op will never go beyond nuclear issue. What do you think? Is it possible that Tehran and Washington cooperate in regional issues?
A: Sure, it is possible Tehran and Washington may cooperate on regional issues, as they have in the past on Afghanistan. But it is unlikely in Syria because their understanding of Bashar al Assad’s role there is dramatically different. Tehran (and Moscow) see him as essential to fighting ISIS. Washington thinks there will be no end to the insurgency and ISIS so long as he remains in power.
I can’t help but note the apparent contradiction in my remarks about the Russian base, but the questions asked were different. In the first interview, the question was about Putin’s remark minimizing the significance of the base, so I responded emphasizing its significance, in particular for possible Russian casualties. In the second interview, the question was about changing the military balance in the Middle East. The base is a significant escalation in Syria, but it does little to change the overall military balance in the Middle East, where the US and its allies are overwhelmingly dominant in conventional military strength.
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Let Ahmed go!
I am a fan of Ahmed Maher, who led the April 6 movement that catalyzed the Egyptian uprising in January 2011 and contributed to the Tamarod protests of June 2013 that brought General Sisi to power. Ahmed has remained an advocate of nonviolence, human rights and democracy despite a harsh prison sentence and even harsher prison conditions.
I have Egyptian friends who tell me what Ahmed did–demonstrate without a permit–would be a crime in Washington DC, not only in Cairo. That is true. But the permit would be easy to get, the fine would be small and the sentence a few days in jail, not three years, including large stretches of it in solitary confinement.
Egypt has pardoned and released hundreds of prisoners in recent days, apparently in the runup to now President Sisi’s speech at the UN today. Why not Ahmed and his April 6 comrades? I imagine it is because the government knows they are incorrigible. If released, they can be relied upon to continue protesting for human rights and democracy.
This puts President Obama, who spoke at the UN this morning about the importance of inclusive democracy and human rights as well as the futility of repression, in an awkward situation. Washington wants Egypt to remain at least as stable as it has been under President Sisi. But his use of repression rather than inclusion and respect for human rights is inconsistent with American values, policy and expectations.
A number of us have joined together in a letter to the President and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon appealing to them to ask President Sisi for the release of the April 6 protesters. Nothing good can come of their continued incarceration. It is time to let Ahmed (and Ahmed and Mohamed) go.
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Tatters
American policy in Syria has supported the “moderate” opposition and sought the removal of Bashar al Assad. Four and a half years into the rebellion there, extremists have largely sidelined the moderate opposition in the center of the country. Russia and Iran are doubling down on their support for Bashar al Assad, who is well on towards fulfilling his prophecy “either me or the jihadis.”
Washington has also wanted to protect Syria’s neighbors from its civil war. Efforts to contain the war’s effects have been no more successful than the efforts to win it. With more than 4 million refugees unsettling Syria’s neighbors and 7 million displaced inside the country, it will take decades to restore the region to some semblance of order. The Islamic State has taken over one third of Iraq. The war has embroiled Turkey in renewed conflict with its own Kurds. Lebanon and Jordan hang by threads to a semblance of order. Israel faces extremists just a few miles from the Syrian territory it occupies on the Golan Heights.
Attention in the press is focused on the Pentagon’s failed efforts over the past year to train and equip viable “moderate” forces to fight against the Islamic State in Syria. Few Syrians sign up. They prefer to fight Assad. The vetting process is long and arduous. Of the few who have gone back to Syria, most have ended up dead, captured or intimidated into turning over equipment and weapons to extremists. The rebalancing of the military equation that John Kerry had rightly recognized as necessary to altering the outcome in a direction the US would find agreeable is simply not occurring.
Enter the Russians. Moscow’s deployment of fighting forces, including attack aircraft, to Latakia would not be necessary if the Assad regime were doing well. Moscow’s immediate military goal is to block the advance of opposition forces towards western Syria, where both the heartland of the Alawite population and Russia’s naval base lie. Its bigger purpose is to protect the regime and foil America’s intention of replacing it with something resembling a democracy. Moscow won’t distinguish in its targets between extremists and moderates but will seek to rebalance the military equation in a direction opposite to what Kerry had in mind.
The advancing opposition forces in the center of the country are mostly Sunni extremists, not moderates. Extremists have agreed to a population exchange with Hizbollah that will clear Sunnis from near the strategically important border with Lebanon and Shia from extremist-held areas farther north. Population exchange aids cantonalization: Syria will soon be a patchwork of areas of control: the regime in Damascus and the west, Kurds along much of the northern border with Turkey, relatively moderate opposition in the south and some Damascus suburbs, assorted Islamist extremists in the center and the Islamic State in the center east. Enclaves will be overrun or traded. Confrontation lines will congeal. Stalemate will ensue.
None of this is good news for either Syrians or Americans. But it is not the worst news.
The viability of the patches will depend on two factors: the strength of the military forces that control them and how effectively they are governed. The regime has been protecting and governing the areas it controls well enough that they have attracted a significant inflow of people, including many whose sympathies are with the opposition. The Islamic State governs brutally in the territory it controls, but has lost some in the north to Kurdish forces, who have set up representative governing structures that include Arabs and appear to be functioning relatively well, their lives made easier by the de facto truce between the Kurds and the Assad regime.
The relative moderates have arguably been less effective than the regime, the Islamic State and the Kurds in governing the areas they control. This is important. The war can be lost on the battlefield. But it has to be won in city hall. The local councils that have formed more or less spontaneously in many “liberated” areas are not doing well. Strapped for cash and untended by the opposition Syrian Interim Government, in many areas they are unable to deliver much except political squabbling among themselves. While unquestionably better than nothing, they lack both legitimacy and technical capabilities as well as connections to a broader political framework. Western aid to local councils has sometimes done more harm than good.
The US military effort in Syria is visibly in tatters. But it won’t matter much if the less visible civilian effort conducted in areas controlled by relative moderates doesn’t improve dramatically.
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Peace picks, September 28-October 2
- Ukraine: From Evolutionary to Revolutionary Reforms | Monday, September 28th | 12:00-1:30 | Atlantic Council | REGISTER TO ATTEND | Please join us for an in-depth discussion of Ukraine’s reform agenda since the Maidan revolution, and the public release of a new, comprehensive assessment of what has been achieved so far and the challenges ahead. Since Ukraine’s Maidan revolution, Ukrainian leaders pledged to push through a long list of urgent reforms, including fighting corruption, securing stable energy supplies at market prices, simplifying the tax code, overhauling civil service, and ensuring macroeconomic stability. VoxUkraine, a network of experts, led by a group of leading global economists, lawyers, and members of the Ukrainian policy community has monitored the reform process in detail. Olena Bilan, Chief Economist at Dragon Capital and Editor of VoxUkraine, and Mike Duane, Contributor and Editor of VoxUkraine, will discuss their assessment of the reform process and what still needs to be done. The most prominent reform achievements are the establishment of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau to fight high-level corruption, the introduction of a new police force in the cities of Kyiv, Odesa, and Lviv, the reform of the banking system, and the restructuring of the natural gas sector. However, these reforms are still insufficient given the vast reform agenda Ukraine’s authorities face. The key question is not whether the country must implement reforms but rather where the government should start the process. After years of mismanagement, nearly every aspect of economic and political life in Ukraine needs reform. There is no time for slow evolutionary changes. Radical and revolutionary reforms are the only way to success.
- Israel in a Dynamic and Changing Region: A Conversation with Ambassador Michael Oren | Monday, September 28th | 4:00-5:00 PM | Wilson Center | REGISTER TO ATTEND | Rarely has the situation in the Middle East seemed more dangerous and complex. Please join us as veteran historian, diplomat and now Knesset member Michael Oren shares his analysis of Israel and the region. Dr. Henri J. Barkey, Director of the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center, will introduce Ambassador Oren, and Aaron David Miller, Vice President for New Initiatives, will moderate. This talk is presented by The Joseph and Alma Gildenhorn Middle East Forum of the Middle East Program.
- The Syrian Refugee Crisis: Challenges for Syria’s Neighbors and the International Community | Tuesday, September 29th | 10:30-12:00 | Brookings Institution | REGISTER TO ATTEND | In the last five years, more than four million Syrian refugees have crossed into neighboring countries seeking safety from the unending civil war. Providing protection and public services for the refugees has taxed the capacities of host countries, with hospitality wearing thin and many refugees despairing about their futures. In recent months, the European dimension of the Syrian refugee crisis has finally drawn global public attention to the catastrophe and the need to increase burden-sharing with neighboring host countries. Does the international community have the political will and the resources to respond, and if so, how will it address the challenge? How is the crisis affecting Syria’s neighboring countries that still bear the brunt of the refugees? Why is burden-sharing so important? Brookings will host a panel discussion to explore the international response to the Syrian refugee crisis. Brookings Senior Fellow Elizabeth Ferris and Brookings, TÜSİAD Senior Fellow and CUSE Turkey Project Director Kemal Kirişci will present their new study, “Not Likely to Go Home”, an examination of the challenges that Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey face in providing protection and humanitarian assistance to Syrian refugees. They will also reflect on what these conclusions mean for the wider international community. Following their presentations, Simon Henshaw of the U.S. State Department, Gregory Maniatis of the Migration Policy Institute, and Alar Olljum of Brookings and the European External Action Service will provide remarks. Elizabeth Ferris will moderate the event and offer opening remarks. Following the presentations, the panelists will take questions from the audience. Join the conversation on Twitter with the hashtag #RefugeeCrisis.
- Egypt: Reducing Risks, Unlocking Potential: Middle East Institute 3rd Annual Conference on Egypt | Wednesday, September 30th | 9:00-4:00 | The Ritz-Carlton | REGISTER TO ATTEND |The Middle East Institute is pleased to announce its third annual conference on Egypt, which will convene a diverse group of Egyptian and American officials, activists, scholars, and entrepreneurs to look beneath the surface of Egypt’s most pressing issues. Three expert panels will examine Egypt’s political situation, domestic and regional security challenges, and economic and human development priorities. MEI’s annual Egypt conference seeks to increase understanding of the risks and opportunities facing Egypt today. The conference is free and open to the public. Updated agenda for the conference, as well as speaker bios, may be found here. Don’t forget to join the conversation on Twitter with the hashtag #EgyptConf2015.
- Women Leading Peace: Women’s Political Participation in Peace Processes | Wednesday, September 30th | 10:00-11:30 | Gaston Hall, Georgetown University | REGISTER TO ATTEND | In Commemoration of the 15th Anniversary of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, Georgetown’s Institute for Women, Peace and Security is hosting a high-level symposium on women’s political participation in peace processes. The symposium features remarks from the President of the Republic Kosovo, H.E. Atifete Jahjaga, and the Hon. Secretary Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State, as well as the launch of the institute’s new report, Women’s Political Participation in Peace Processes in Northern Ireland, Kenya, Guatemala and the Philippines. There will be an expert panel featuring the following speakers: Monica McWilliams, Professor, Transitional Justice Institute, Ulster University; Njeri Kabeberi, Executive Director, Center for Multi-Party Democracy Kenya; Claudia Paz y Paz, Former Attorney General of Guatemala; and Miriam Coronel Ferrer, Chair, Government of the Philippines Peace Panel.
- Colombia’s Peace Progress and Transitional Justice | Wednesday, September 30th | 8:30-5:00 | US Institute of Peace | REGISTER TO ATTEND | Colombia’s government and the FARC movement achieved their September 23 breakthrough in peace negotiations by setting down basic principles on the rights of victims to truth, justice, reparations and guarantees of non-repetition. USIP’s next Colombia Peace Forum, on September 30, will analyze the role of historical memory in these transitional justice issues. As policymakers and analysts consider how the new breakthrough might be consolidated, Colombian researchers will present a report, central to these issues, to a U.S. audience for the first time. The report—Basta Ya! Colombia: Memories of War and Dignity—was produced by Colombia’s National Center for Historical Memory. Its authors will join other scholars and practitioners to examine lessons that might contribute to the creation of the national truth commission and other architectures as part of the peace process.The event will be co-sponsored by the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Washington Office on Latin America, the International Center for Transitional Justice and the U.S. Agency for International Development. The discussions will take place in English and Spanish with simultaneous interpretation in both languages. The event will be streamed live without interpretation; webcasts will be posted later in both languages. To participate via Twitter, use the hashtag #ColombiaPeaceForum. The full agenda is available in English and Spanish.
- Indonesia’s Foreign Policy Shifts | Thursday, October 1st | 12:00-1:00 | East-West Center | REGISTER TO ATTEND | The last fifteen months have seen robust domestic and international debates on the changing fundamentals of Indonesia’s foreign policy. These debates have highlighted different shades of Indonesian foreign policy, exhibiting the complex nature of Indonesian strategic thinking and the multiple challenges it seeks to address. Experts have variously labeled Indonesia’s current strategic thinking as assertive, inward-looking, internationalist and auto-piloted. Some have also wondered whether Jokowi’s Indonesia has any foreign policy direction at all.Emerging powers, such as Indonesia, often encounter growing dissonance between their existing international status and aspirations. Jokowi’s Indonesia is exhibiting a similar dilemma, prompting Indonesia watchers to revisit Indonesia’s long-standing debate about whether Indonesia is punching below, above or at par with its weight. Jokowi’s Indonesia seems to have moved away from ASEAN, altered some of its normative and ideological approaches, and changed its long-standing position on the South China Sea. Experts debate whether Indonesia is “going it alone”.Dr. Vibhanshu Shekhar, an Asia Studies Visiting Fellow at the East West Center, will discuss these issues in order to highlight strategic underpinnings of the foreign policy of Jokowi’s Indonesia.
- Averting a Deepening U.S.-China Rift Over the South China Sea | Thursday, October 1st | 4:30-6:00 | Bernstein-Offit Building, SAIS | RSVP via email to: Reischauer@jhu.edu | Dr. Michael D. Swaine will address how ongoing disputes threaten to drive U.S.-China relations in a far more adversarial, zero-sum direction and destabilize the region. He will emphasize how Washington and Beijing face a growing need to clarify their claims and grievances, provide a clear indication of consequences to unacceptable behavior, provide mutual near-term assurances to avoid entanglement, and work to stabilize the long-term relationship.
- Striving for Northeast Asian Peace | Friday, October 2nd | 9:00-12:00 | CSIS | REGISTER TO ATTEND | Please join us for an international conference with senior opinion makers, policy makers, and officials to look in-depth at the prospects for regional cooperation among the major powers of East Asia, in advance of the White House summit between the United States and the Republic of Korea.
This event is by RSVP only and all remarks are on-the-record. Speakers include: Dr. Evan Medeiros, Former Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Asian Affairs, National Security Council; Dr. Kurt Campbell, Chairman and CEO, The Asia Group; Former Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, U.S. Department of State; Ambassador Ahn Ho-Young, Ambassador to the United States; Dr. Victor Cha, Senior Adviser and Korea Chair, CSIS; Professor and Director, Asian Studies Program, Georgetown University; Dr. Shin Beomchul, Director General for Policy Planning, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Korea; Dr. Jin Canrong, Professor and Associate Dean, School of International Studies, Renmin University of China; Dr. Choi Kang, Vice President for Research, Asan Institute for Policy Studies; Former National Security Council Staff, The Blue House; Dr. Narushige Michishita, Director of Security and International Studies Program, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Japan
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Transition matters
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace hosted a panel on Thursday entitled “Searching for Answers to Troubled Democratic Transitions,” co-sponsored by the National Endowment for Democracy, the Inter-American Dialogue, and the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA). The panel gave Abraham Lowenthal, professor emeritus of International Relations at USC, and Sergio Bitar, non-resident senior fellow and project director at Inter-American Dialogue, the opportunity to present their new book, Democratic Transitions: Conversations with World Leaders, an edited volume of lengthy interviews the two editors conducted with leaders who oversaw the gradual and successful transition of their countries from autocracy to democracy, as well as with some opposition figures from those countries.
The aim of conducting the interviews was to determine whether lessons can be drawn from earlier transitions in ‘Third Wave’ countries such as Indonesia, Chile, and Ghana and applied during what some have termed a democratic recession. After their overview, the president of the National Endowment for Democracy, Carl Gershman, contributed comments, while the audience also heard from two experts on countries currently on the cusp of transitions: Priscilla Clapp, senior advisor at the US Institute of Peace and the Asia Society, discussed Myanmar, while Moisés Naím, distinguished fellow at Carnegie, discussed Venezuela.
Carnegie’s vice president for Studies, Thomas Carothers, introduced the panel, remarking that the world has not seen a single new democracy emerge in the past decade. The Arab Spring was a period of hope, but with transitions thwarted in many of those countries, we have also been observing worrying global trends that would seem to suggest the push for democracy has slowed or even begun to reverse. Carothers still believes that the arc of history bends toward democracy, however, and the panelists would appear to agree.
Lowenthal underlined that the aim of the book was not to produce a work of theoretical comparative politics, but to try to distil best practices and recurrent issues for democratic transitions from the experiences of leaders who had lived and struggled through them. The narrative of prior experience can provide general principles that politicians in developing democracies can apply to local problems. Through their interviews, Lowenthal and Bitar observed that a set of issues cropped up in each case, apparently inherent to the process of transitioning. These included the problems of unifying oppositions while marginalizing destabilizing elements within them, preventing violence while separating a legitimate police force from the armed forces, and fighting corruption and impunity, among others.
Lowenthal and Bitar came up with ten imperatives for transition:
- Move gradually and take every opportunity, not waiting for a ‘better’ choice
- Maintain a hopeful vision about the process
- Build coalitions between political parties and social movements
- Protect the spaces of open dialogue
- Build a constitution that represents all members of society and institutes a system for problem-solving
- Enhance and reinforce political parties, or create them if necessary
- Separate the police from the armed forces and ensure the latter is subject to the government
- Ensure transitional justice
- Manage the political economy of transition, to provide the basic conditions for governance
- and manage external support, so that it converges with domestic forces
Gershman found the book instructive. Despite apparent autocratic resurgence and a crisis of confidence or political dysfunction in many advanced democracies, he thought what is currently occurring should not be understood as a democratic recession, but rather a ‘third reverse wave’ following on the Third Wave of the late 20th century. He offered steps that ought to be taken by advanced democracies to shepherd democratic transitions elsewhere, including a call to regain the will to fight the political and intellectual battle for liberal democratic values.
Gershman was uncompromising; he diverged from Lowenthal and Bitar in rejecting gradualism, saying that we cannot accept hybrid regimes as better than dictatorships. The editors, however, confirmed that all the interviewees had come out strongly in favor of gradual transitions. That is often how transitions transpired successfully.
Clapp found much similarity between the cases described in the book and the situation in Myanmar today, although the transition there is still in early stages and needs to be further developed. The international community entertains very high expectations given Myanmar’s specific history and context: it has been for so long a repressed society and still faces significant challenges in its transition, in military-civilian relations, an economy thoroughly controlled by an oligarchy, and exclusion of ethnic minorities.
Naím presented a dissent. By interviewing leaders only, the book presents one perspective on the transition process. Valuable as this work is, there are significant differences with many of the countries today on the cusp of transitioning, as opposed to the Third Wave countries covered in the book. These ignored factors include the phenomenon of states incorporating crime into their behaviour, as ‘mafia states’ (like Russia or Venezuela); the crucial role oil plays in oil-producing autocracies, shoring up regimes; the outsized influence of foreign actors; the role of social media; and expanding middle classes. Naím also thought it a simplification that militaries are treated as unified institutions, when really within militaries there are numerous factions competing for power.
A key issue remained unresolved: whether the experiences of Third Wave democracies could be applied to countries in North Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere in the future.
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Is meeting Putin smart?
The White House has let it be known that President Obama will meet with President Putin next week at the United Nations. Is this smart diplomacy, or not?
The arguments against it are strong. Putin has invaded eastern Ukraine. His proxies there are failing to fulfill their commitments to a ceasefire and expelling humanitarian organizations as well as the UN. He is also deploying combat forces to Syria to protect the Alawite heartland along its Mediterranean coast and to protect the Russian port facilities at Tartous. Defiance and escalation do not merit the acceptance a meeting implies. Giving Putin the recognition he craves will only encourage further misbehavior intended to ensure that vital issues cannot be solved without Russian involvement.
The arguments for it are weaker. We need to reiterate the need for Moscow to live up to the September 1 ceasefire agreement in Ukraine. We need to hear directly from Putin what his intentions are in Syria in order to judge whether we can make common cause with him there against the Islamic State. The Ukraine-related sanctions are having an impact. It would be a mistake to leave any stone unturned in the quest for peaceful resolutions in both Ukraine and Syria. Putin is the one pressing for the meeting, which is just a meeting. It does not imply acceptance of Putin’s behavior or a great power role for Russia.
But there is another consideration: what is President Obama getting in exchange for this meeting? Have the Russians offered something of value?
I don’t know the answer. This is where the confidential nature of diplomatic exchanges makes it difficult to comment. A meeting might be worthwhile if it means Russia will permanently stop its advance in eastern Ukraine and abide by the Minsk 2 agreement. It would certainly be worthwhile if Moscow were seriously committed to a political transition in Syria that excludes Bashar al Assad from power.
The odds against both these propositions are long. Moscow is unquestionably feeling the pressure of lower oil prices, sanctions and diplomatic isolation. Putin wouldn’t be calling Elton John to discuss gay rights (yes, this time he really did) if he weren’t feeling the need to grab a headline or two and project an image of openness and reason. But Putin is a master at distracting attention from his perfidies with ultimately meaningless gestures. He can’t withdraw support for Assad and still hope to hold on to the port facilities at Tartous, which any opposition-supported successor government will feel compelled to banish. Retreat from Donbas, or even a serious effort to implement the existing agreement, would surrender Ukraine to the European Union and the West.
I’ll be glad to be proved wrong, but my sense is that Putin is prepared to stay the course both in Ukraine and in Syria, intensifying or toning down Russian military efforts as the situation requires but refusing to budge on the basic issues of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity as well as support for the existing Syrian regime. If that is right, the best outcome from a meeting next week will be an American conviction that he is irredeemable and that only a shift in the military balance in both places will lead to serious political outcomes in Syria and Ukraine.
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